Bob McNally - Failproof Tactics for Whitetail Bowhunting: Tips and Techniques to Help You Take a Trophy This Season

It has become popularand rightly sofor many people to give something back. Often this is done by donating time or money to a university, or a foundation. It is fitting, therefore, that a percentage of the proceeds of this book go directly to the non-profit Bowhunting Preservation Alliance. This remarkable organization will use these funds to introduce the endless joy of bowhunting to new sportsmen, and expand and enhance bowhunting opportunities around the country. With the purchase of this book, every bowhunter has a chance to give something back to the great sport and tradition of bowhunting. For that Im honored to be a part of this exciting and worthwhile venture that will help ensure that my children and yours always will be able to bend a bow for hunting.

Bob McNally

Its unusual that something you buy to support your passion will insure the source of your enjoyment will be preserved for your children and grandchildren. Save Our Heritage is simple: your purchase of this book will help us try to put archery into your community, will insure that bowhunting is offered to every beginning archer, and will insure that every bowhunter will have a chance to enjoy the great outdoorswith bow in handfor as long as they have the passion burning in their soul. We appreciate your contribution.

Jay McAninch

CEO/President, Archery Trade Association

Copyright 2014 by Skyhorse Publishing

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Owen Corrigan

Cover photo credit Darrell Daigre

ISBN: 978-1-62873-683-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-013-1

Printed in China

Dedication

For Chris...

The only date I ever had who gladly wore leaky, oversize boots helping to hang tree stands, while her lips turned blue from cold, and never once spoke about leaving for home, a warm fire, and supper. Our children are fortunate to call her mom, for she understands the passions, joys, and intrinsic values found in a life outdoors.

Bob McNally

Foreword

Whether you live in the Midwest or the South, bowhunt the conifer forests of the Northeast or the cottonwood bottoms of the West, you have the same questions about hunting for whitetails that just about everybody else has: Whats the best way for me to hunt and whats the best equipment for me to use?

Through experience, some of us find our own answers, and thats another reason bowhunting is so enjoyable. But if you want to save a little time, begin here by reading Failproof Tactics for Whitetail Bowhunting . Author Bob McNally has assembled some of the best current information available on bowhunting for whitetail deer, as reflected in the conjured memories of experienced hunterssome of them famous, all of them expert.

Each chapter covers a critical topic of bowhunting. Former Olympic archer Jay Barrs, for example, examines the various disciplines a hunter must master to shoot accurately time and again. Joella Bates, a national 3-D target champion and veteran bowhunter, discusses accessories she considers essential to success; Ronnie Cuz Strickland, of Mossy Oak, provides his formula for quieting bowhunting equipment; Archers Choice television show host Ralph Cianciarulo shares his secrets for hunting saddles in rolling terrain; and Michigan bowhunting legend Claude Pollington offers advice on ground-blind bowhunting. Most chapters involve a single hunter, but a few provide insights from a group, such as the chapter where seven bowhuntersamong them, such famed archers as Pete Shepley, Bill Jordan, and Jim Crumleyexpound on their perfect bow-and-arrow setups, and offer practical advice.

Among the contributors to Failproof Tactics for Whitetail Bowhunting are some hunters who are not well known outside their home range, but should be. For example, theres retired Jacksonville fireman Jim Jones, who has taken about 250 deer by bow on public land, including a number of record bucks in the 150-inch class. Collectively, the contributors have more than 1,000 years of bowhunting experience, and have taken approximately 8,000 whitetails with archery equipment. Famous or not, these guys definitely know their stuff.

Author Bob McNally knows his stuff, too, and is eminently qualified to produce such a book about bowhunting, as he is one of the most accomplished bowhunters and writers in America. Several Pope & Young-class bucks are among the more than 100 deer he has taken with a bow, and his numerous articles and books on a variety of outdoor sports mark him as a writer who knows whereof he writes.

As a writer cum expert, Bob is something of an anachronisma holdover from the days when the most successful outdoor writers were accomplished hunters themselves. We can thank Tom McNally, Bobs father, for that. I doubt that Bob ever thinks of hunting without also thinking of his father, who enjoyed everything the outdoors has to offer and made sure Bob had the opportunity to develop the same appreciation.

In the 1950s, Tom was outdoor editor of The Sun in Baltimore and later of the Chicago Tribune , as well as a major contributor to Outdoor Life and Field & Stream magazines. He had a lot of contacts and a lot of invitations to hunt good places, and made the most of them. From the time Bob started tagging along with his dad to hunting camps in Pennsylvania, to the moment when, as a teenager, he killed his first deer (a doe) in Wisconsin, Bob absorbed every crumb of information provided by Tom and his hunting buddies.

Among them was Fred Bear, whom the senior McNally had met at a Midwest sports show. When the two got together, Tom liked to talk about his bowhunting adventures with his longbow, and Bear like to talk about fishing for trout back home on Michigans AuSable River.

Dad helped Fred with his trout fly-rodding and Fred helped dad with his bowhunting, Bob recalls. I was brought into the fold in the early 1960s. Fred Bear gave me my first bow about then, a recurve made for a youngster, and I started shooting it with Dad while he practiced for his Midwestern deer hunts and two African bowhunts he made in the mid-1960s.

Bob was a quick study. By 1964, he was strong enough to shoot a Bear Kodiak recurve, a 50-pounder, matched with cedar arrows and Bear Razorheads. It was on one of their bowhunting forays in central Wisconsin that Bob got that first deer, in 1965, when he was 15 years old, while hunting from the ground. He was on his way.